Putin's evil Wagner army execute man with a sledgehammer in chilling video

Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has released an execution video of a soldier who was killed with a sledgehammer.

In an unverified video published by the Gray Zone Telegram channel, which is linked to Wagner, shows the solder giving his name and recruitment details before a man hits him with the hammer in a cellar.

The man, who identifies himself as Dmitry Yakushchenko, 44 says he was born in Crimea and left prison before joining Wagner.

It comes after the group released a similar “execution” video three months ago.

The video shows Dmitry Yakushchenko who says he was born in Crimea
Grey Zone Telegram

The group, which calls itself a private military company, began operations in 2014 in Crimea.

In the video Yakushchenko says: "I was planning on finding some loophole, just, as they say, to run away," adding that it was "not his war" and that he planned on leaving.

Text accompanying the clip said he had defected to Ukraine four days after becoming a Wagner fighter.

The first part of the video showed him in Ukrainian captivity where he suggests that Crimea might return to Ukraine’s control in several years.

According to the text, he had been jailed earlier for murder but had seized the chance to fight for Wagner in order to leave jail.

In the footage, which is captioned "Video from the court for treason", Yakushchenko is shown with his head taped to a block on a brick wall, while an unidentified person dressed in camouflage stands behind him carrying a sledgehammer.

Seconds before the killing, he said: "I was in the streets of the city of Dnipro where I got hit on the head and lost consciousness.

"I woke up in this room and was told I would be tried.”

The video shows the brutal killing with a sledgehammer
Grey Zone Telegram

The person behind then raises the sledgehammer and appears to swing at his head as the video becomes blurred.

A caption then appears on the video which says, "The court session is declared closed."

The Grey Zone post makes a sarcastic comment about Yakushchenko's death, referring back to Wagner's November "execution" of Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was also a former prison inmate.

"Like his colleague Yevgeny Nuzhin earlier, he caught the same disease that makes you lose consciousness in Ukrainian cities, earlier in Kyiv, now in Dnipro, and then wake up in a basement at your last court session," the post said.